This is a reflection of the increasing penetration of smartphones in the country, which is now at 60 percent.
As smartphone penetration in France is now estimated to have reached 60 percent, a rapidly growing number of people in the country are turning to mobile commerce as a part of their regular shopping activities.
This, according to a recent report from comScore, which indicated that since Q1, there are now 700,000 more smartphones.
With such as growing population of people who now have smartphones, it means that there is also a growing number of consumers who have the technology that they require to take part in mobile commerce. According to the comScore data, that is exactly what a tremendous number of French customers feel, as well. Merchants are reaching out to consumers over that channel, and those shoppers are often listening.
There are now 10 million consumers in France that use mobile commerce while in-store.
The comScore data indicated that while inside a retail store, many consumers are taking out their smartphones and are using mobile commerce behaviors to help them to make their decisions. For example, approximately 8.5 million people would phone or text a friend or family member in order to ask questions regarding a product that they are considering. Another 9.3 million people took pictures of items that they were thinking about and among them, 5.8 million sent them to family or friends.
Another 3.4 million consumers used barcodes to help them with their mobile commerce investigations, by using their devices to scan QR codes, for example, to learn more about a product or a brand.
It has been predicted that as the adoption of smartphones continues to expand, it could also reach the point that adoption of mobile commerce will move beyond that which is seen in other countries, such as the United States. This is because the daily routine of the average person in France includes a larger amount of shopping (such as for groceries) than the average American. Since the average person in the U.S. stocks up on food products only once every three weeks, there is a much lower opportunity for regular smartphone based shopping than in France, where the storage space isn’t available and groceries are purchased much more frequently.
This gives them the opportunity to share funds through a mobile payments service at any time through a Singapore-registered cell phone number. Then, the recipient can collect the money directly into his or her bank account based in Singapore. This service closely reflects the growing connection that people in the country have with their smartphones, as they use them for a growing number of their everyday activities. Maybank is also using it to help to further decrease the current reliance that the population has on cash.